Sunday, December 13, 2009

Updates

Operation Holiday Stockings is all buttoned up for 2009. Before bringing you up to date, however, I wanted to show the beautiful stockings Melinda sewed for OHS. We already had this year's stockings stuffed and packed, but we are now well on our way for 2010. Thanks Melinda. Last week David and Matt sealed up all 16 boxes and got them ready for mailing to our troops in Afghanistan, Cuba and Japan. We shipped over 1000 stockings, each one full of love, prayers and goodies. We shipped 600 stockings to one unit in Afghanistan. They have suffered a lot of losses since being deployed, and we are praying these stockings bring a bit of cheer to them. We had a special visitor at work. This is Calum, and his mom and dad, Grady and Jenn. What a beautiful family. Jenn tells me Calum loves the blankie I knit for him, and that makes me feel happy. Calum wasn't the only baby to get something specially knit for him.

Johnny got his very own "grown up" knit sweater from Susan. He loves the sweater and spent the first five minutes prancing around wagging his tail and then he crawled into Susan's lap to give her kisses of thanks.

Susan knit in the St. John's cross, which is the symbol of happiness. Perfect. Johnny has to be one of the happiest doggies I have ever come across. Everyone is Johnny's best friend, and he is always happy.

In the past two weeks we have been dealing with below freezing weather. The days have been beautiful, with clear blue skies, but COLD. I feel like I'm back in Anchorage. I wore wool sweaters and my wonderful hand knit socks to work each day. For the trip to Sequim this past Friday, I had on two sweaters, a fleece vest, my fleece jacket, wool socks, fleece lined shoes, gloves and a hat. This was just so the ferry ride wouldn't be unbearable. It was 15 degrees outside that morning, and with the wind coming off of the water, it was COLD.

Now we all have been managing and most of us have not been complaining about the weather, because NONE of us wants another December of 17 days of snow. The problem with this type of weather, however, is everything freezes. Dog water dishes, hummingbird feeders, water pipes, and water tanks. Many people had their pipe freeze, and then burst, making a big mess. One friend called a plumber at 6:00 a.m. last Thursday, and a plumber arrived at 10:00 p.m. on Friday. Fortunately for her, the pipe that burst was in her garage and not in her house.

We got to Edgar's Acres on Friday morning to no water in the house. To make a long story short, the water tank (that holds the water from the well and is in the garage) was frozen solid. The plumber there told us this cold spell (lasting 16 days) is the worst they have seen in 40 years. By Saturday at noon we had running water again.

At least in this extreme weather we were lucky enough to have heat and electricity. And McDonald's where they have working bathrooms for the cost of a cup of coffee.

It's warmed up a bit so now it's snow we are looking at. Got to love winter. In eight more days the days start getting longer and we will be that much closer to Spring.